


The Parting Glass

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M, inspired by the Thor 2 trailer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-26
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 12:39:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/774288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The three of them take a walk. They may be Some Time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sinking Man

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really have any idea what's going to happen in _Thor: The Dark World_ , obviously, but after watching the trailer I couldn't help but glee at the thought of Jane, Loki, and Thor being forced to work together in some shape or fashion. I'm personally quite fond of Jane, and I do love to look at Loki and Thor's troubled relationship through her eyes, so...here are two little stories, exploring just that.
> 
> This part is named for and written while listening to _[Sinking Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtlXkNXms4A)_.

The morning of the third day might very well bring an end to the strained lines of tension strung between their unequal triangle, she thinks with bleak relief. Loki again stands at its long apex, eyes fixed upon the far distance. Thor remains at Jane’s side, his bulk offering both comforting warmth and strong brace. Her own body remains a tangle of exhausted agony, and the landscape seems as pitiless, as endless as it had the first day when Heimdall had deposited them as close to their goal as its wards would allow.

“It shall not be much farther,” he had murmured to her as Loki had finished clearing their small fire, putting away what small supplies they had brought. Now she looks, and everything is a blur. Everything is the _same_ : it is day only by Loki’s word, and that is not something to put much store by in even her own limited experience. Whatever passes for a sun in this cursed place seems never to rise, never to set. Always above them hangs the same unchanging sky, drear blue and grey. It gives her almost the sense of being underwater, the sky a ceiling of pack ice. Certainly this is a place of silence, where sound swallows itself whole and pelagic rivers choke themselves with brine.

But it seems not to be so silent today. They have not gone far, the snow thankfully little more than flurries, when she becomes aware even through her swaddling cloak that Loki keeps beat to song. He is _humming_. It cannot be denied his voice carries a lovely tune, oh he of the silver tongue.

Yet in this place that tongue rarely creates word for anyone but Thor. Jane is to Loki as a pane of glass, and he chooses always to stare straight through her. In the ironic way of such things, she has in contrast found it hard to take her eyes from him. Like all of Earth, she had seen the footage of a madman loosed upon their world. A kind of cool sanity clings to him now as he moves across the tundra, graceful even with chains dangling from the manacles about his wrists. But then he is too thin, and there are moments when even that elegance deserts him entire: a step misplaced, a centre of gravity tilted drastically sideways.

But he does speak to Thor. Sniping and sharp though he can be, Jane had expected as much from Loki. In contrast Thor keeps his jaw tight, biting back what must be furious words of his own. Jane finds she does much the same, even given the grey muddle of her thoughts. In high school she’d been more suited to science than pandering to any other social circle, and she’d leaned quite enough the power of observation and well-timed retort. But it is better not to be drawn into wars of words with Loki, Thor had said, though Loki skirmishes with him often enough.

Thor does not react overmuch to the humming, though it continues through all the morning, stopping only when they break for rehydration, rest, and what little food is necessary. Only as supposed afternoon stretches long does it change.

Wrapped up in the task simply of moving forward in her exhaustion, at first Jane does not realise what Loki has done. The song rises and falls, endless in its play now upon word and tune. Cast in another language entire, every syllable comes unfamiliar to her ear. It knots about her heart, strange and tight; this ignorance is not something she has experienced so far. Frigga had been kind enough to explain the premise of the Alltongue to her, but it seems it can be overridden. With a frown she looks up at Thor, voice half-hoarse in the cool air.

“I…I don’t understand what he’s saying.”

“It does not matter.”

But she thinks it does. Thor wears a face like gathering stormclouds, his footfall heavy and the arm not about her waist hovering close by the haft of his hammer. Loki never once looks back, blithe in his lead, though she does not doubt he knows exactly what follows so closely at his heels.

The end comes so quick Jane almost stumbles. Thor is gone from her side, hand upon his brother’s arm, jerking him around.

“If you do not cease, I will not hesitate to gag you once more.”

The hissed words bring a vivid memory. Jane remembers well sitting with Darcy clinging tight to her arm, the photographs upon a television screen: a would-be conqueror dragged home in chains and muzzled like a rabid dog. But Loki’s grin is wide, now, and his voice is light like ice.

“Why not just strike me down with that hammer you’ve got in your hand? I’ll scream so much louder, then.” His body entire moves with a sudden sinuous laugh. “You always _did_ like it when I screamed.”

Behind the stubble Thor comes over in a high flush, even in the cold. Fury has him seizing Loki by his collar, hefting him high. Even with his considerable height the motion forces Loki’s feet to dangle above the ground, shadowed by the hollowed print of his last steps.

Yet Loki barely shows his discomfort, hands rising palms-out in only the mockery of surrender. “I yield, thunderer. Let me down and I shall hold my peace.”

For a moment longer Thor holds him still. When he lets him drop, it is with a shove backward to match; Loki may have anticipated as much, given he catches himself with a Cheshire grin. It remains firmly in place as he watches his brother return to Jane’s side. As she leans grateful into his bulk Thor begins to adjust the double layers of cloak about her shivering form. Something twists in his brother’s bright grin, then.

“Quite the noble prince, as always.” One hand rises, passes back through the smooth curve of his hair, disturbing what few snowflakes had settled amongst the black. “I see you are in no great hurry to offer me any further warmth, despite my own recent infirmity.”

“You are a _frost giant_!”

Given the way he stiffens, Jane can tell even before she looks upward that Thor regrets the words as soon as they are spoken. For his own part Loki looks for a moment as if he has been slapped. Then it is gone, washed away by that brittle veneer of ice so suited to the sharp lines of his pale face.

“Oh, yes. Have no fear, Odinson, I shan’t forget my place here.” Still the bitterness seeps through the composure, bright as a summer’s day. “I always knew it, with you for a brother.”

“Loki—”

Whether apology or not, it has come too late. Loki has removed himself to the front of their pointed formation, and they have little choice but to fall into his step. All is silence, now. For all she hadn’t understood a word of its lilting lyrics, Jane almost misses the song.

The day’s trek ends in a small cave, tucked away from the rising wind and snow. Warmth comes only from a small fire built from peculiar coals taken from the tinderbox, and they huddle about its circle as they take a small meal of energy-dense meat and dried grains. The remnants of said meal have scarcely been packed away when the argument begins. Jane keeps her own counsel, not least of all because some part of her sides with Loki. She had known this matter would come soon to a head, considering she herself had begun to wonder if and when Thor ever slept.

“You will wear yourself to nothing before we even reach our destination, and then who will stand champion to your precious mortal woman then?” Loki snaps, and two spots of colour burn high in Thor’s cheeks.

“My stamina is not in question!”

“It is. I am questioning it now.” Loki heaves a peevish little breath, head tilted in a way that oddly makes Jane think of childish conspiracy. “I understand your lack of trust. In fact I should welcome it, if not for the fact I myself am nowhere near my true strength, and I should rather appreciate having you at full capacity if all manner of chaos breaks loose.”

 _Which it undoubtedly will_. It is just hard to say by whose word such shall come. But it has touched something in Thor, this truth that drags his shoulders down into an unhappy sag. Even as she wants to say _Don’t!_ guilt trips her tongue to silence. Jane’s own fatigue has been all-encompassing, but then there is his to consider now.

“Very well.” Straightening again, Thor accepts so easily the mantle of king he has been born to bear. “But you will comport yourself in the manner of the prince you once were.”

Loki has the smile of an angel, when he wishes it. “I do promise not to rattle my chains at her.”

“ _Loki_.”

“Thor.”

They do not look at one another in the manner of brothers, she thinks – most especially when they believe the other is not looking at all. Yet Jane is herself an only child, raised by a father who often managed to be both devoted and distracted in sometimes the same very breath. They, too, have been brothers for longer than even her country of birth has existed, and by several fold at that. Asgardian royal protocol is also a mystery to her. She knows not if they had spent separate years in foreign courts or academies, Loki about his sorcery and Thor at war. For all she knows, they have spent the measure of their lives forever in one another’s company, at most never more than a thrust of the Bifröst apart.

Certainly their long brotherhood is a language all of its own, and one entirely without sound. Nothing more is said, spoken instead in that long-held look alone. Then Thor is making himself comfortable before the small fire, speaking but briefly to Jane before giving himself over to sleep.

Jane knows she should follow his lead, and she cannot complain overly of her circumstances when she is wrapped in her cloak, and Thor’s too. But Loki has taken this first watch and she has reached the point of exhaustion where sleep is more effort than seems humanly possible. Instead she huddles deeper, staring into the flames. That focus cannot last long, not when he is there, profile in sharp relief as he looks to the distance beyond the mouth of the cave. Though she doubts she ever might ask she wonders what it is that he has seen, he who had fallen through the stars and into the darkness beyond.

“Has no-one ever told you it is rude to stare?”

Though she starts, the reply rolls right off her tongue. Darcy would be proud. “It’s also rude to look straight through someone like they don’t even exist. But you seem to be pretty cool with that.”

“While clearly you are not.”

“Yeah, well, excuse me for not wanting to be one of your little worker ants, sitting here waiting for the day you choose to step on us.”

This earns her a raised brow, and she takes some fierce pride in that; obviously he had underestimated what details SHIELD would choose to tell her of his little excursion to earth. Then his shoulders move in a fluid shrug. “I wonder if you would be so bold in your words,” he says with but mild interest, “if not for the fact you hold my brother’s mighty hammer in your service.”

“I am what I am.” Folding her hands deeper into her cloaks, she raises her chin. “And whether you like it or not, I am here, and you are here, and Thor is here.”

“I had noticed.” His words are as dry as the summer rain that chooses never to fall, and she cannot help but scowl.

“So stop looking through me like I’m some window you’d break if only you thought you’d get away with it.”

Shifting, flame shimmering from the sinuous metal of his close-worn armour, Loki tilts his head. “I wonder that it has never occurred to you that I need not do you the slightest bit of harm, Dr. Foster.” Now he smiles again, and though he does not show his teeth she still feels the bite of them. “Time will take its own care of you.”

“What, you’ll just wait me out?”

“You are not as we are.”

For a liar, he speaks the truth so easily. Jane has seen as much for herself, in the company of queen and prince. They had walked the alleys and branched tunnels of the orchards together, Iðunn’s golden apples a bright harvest above their heads, a thousand golden suns set amongst the leaves. And how small the fruit had seemed in Thor’s great hand – small, for something that held so much beneath its firm skin. Looking upon it then, she could not help but recall stories of the tesseract: worlds of Lovecraftian lore and madness, held half-hearted behind the six false faces seen by the eyes of mortals.

“And what if I lived forever?”

Perhaps the narrowed eyes ought to give her warning enough, but Jane does not back down. A moment later Loki gives over to crooked curve of a smile not meant to hold the slightest joy. “Then I wish you well of him.”

Jane has no idea what to say to that. Even had she not been in a constant state of exhaustion both physical and mental, she doubts she could best Loki even at his worst. Her eyes skip sideways, to the great shape Thor makes beneath his the scarlet of his cape, face smoothed and still.

_You were right, to warn me not to play these sorts of games with your brother._

“Do not concern yourself. He will not hear our conversation.”

Indeed, Thor appears deeply asleep – certainly more so than seems logical given his honest misgivings. The look she turns on Loki is near as sharp as the sudden fear that pierces low in her squirming abdomen. “What have you done?”

“Only nudged him further into dreams and proper rest.” He raises his hands briefly from his lap, lets them fall again in a clatter of chain. “Do you not believe he needs it?”

Teeth worry at her lip, though she hardens her voice when she nods to those hands. “I thought those stopped your magic.”

“Only mostly.” He speaks as if condescending to a child, stretching his long legs before him in lazy ease. “When you are as skilled in seiðr as I, Dr. Foster, to strip me bare of it would be to kill me entire.” There is no humour to him now, his chains moving again with soft clank. “But it seems I have my uses yet.”

When she swallows, it is against the protest of a dry throat. “Does Thor know you can do that?”

“He would be a fool if he did not.” The frank amusement in his eyes speaks volumes as to his opinion of his brother’s presumed wisdom. “But have no fear, the Allfather is no fool. The filters on my seiðr are strong and narrow-pored. I may only work, and my weaves will only hold, should they have no ill-effect on those warded against my malice. Let me show you.”

Before Jane can move, long fingers snap out, twist about a pinch of skin. “ _Don’t_!”

Loki already retreats, and both of them have turned to where Thor had set about his slumber. Even as her upper arms sings protest at Loki’s brief assault, she sees the body has shifted, the eyes creasing as if he hears his voice called from some great distance. But Loki’s gloved hands have returned to his lap, stilled of all mischief. As they watch, Thor subsides once more, and Loki raises an eyebrow.

“A neat little trick, yes?”

A shudder wracks her body entire. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

“He would.” Already he leans forward again. “Let me show you another.”

“Don’t touch me.”

He laughs, as if she had suggested they marry in an autumn ceremony with the Allfather himself presiding. “I don’t plan on it,” he mutters, and his hand passes over the low flames. They flare, dance upward. Jane gives a little startled gasp, scrambles backward; he gives her a bland look, but it is still a good five minutes before she grudgingly allows her body to be lured forward by the promise of heat.

“Thanks. I guess.”

His shoulders move up, down, though he says no more. Jane leaves him to his ruminations, though her own are scattered, incohesive. She cannot help but be drawn to him again, to the flicker of shadow over his face. When he smiles, he does not even glance upwards.

“Look at me, Dr. Foster. Do I look to have prospered from his love of me?”

Her voice sounds strange indeed, coming as it does from between numb lips. “He doesn’t seem to have done too well out of loving you, either.”

“I will grant you that.” His arms spread wide, expansive and extravagant. “We have loved each other as long as we have been together. See how well it has served us both!”

Shaking fingers close tight over the cloak. “Love isn’t a slave. You can’t tell it what to do.”

He shrugs, suddenly agreeable. “No. We ourselves are yoked to love, and sometimes that same rope can be used to hang us in the end.” When he leans forward, his voice is low and conspiratorial; she leans back by instinct more than artifice. “But who ties the noose, do you think?”

Rhetorical questions are likely a specialty of his, she knows, but she’s always been one to seek answers even where there are supposedly none. “I don’t think it matters, when we both know who kicked the stool out from under himself.”

For a long moment Loki is quiet, eyes searching hers as if by their power alone he might shred her to little more than her component atoms. It makes her shiver, to wonder if he might have the power to do that should he shed the gleaming runed metal about his narrow wrists. Then he shakes his head, pitying even in his amusement. “You have a world beyond him. You have no wish to be his queen.” Again, his smile broadens. “You would be a poor monarch, Jane Foster.”

Even beneath the doubled weight of the cloaks, she shrugs. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, after all this.” Then, she straightens her spine. “But I do know, even if I did become queen, I would have him beside me, always. He would be no king alone.”

Such words may have been a mistake, she thinks, for all they summon not a single flinch. But his eyes have become colder yet, reminding her of a heritage that moves like constant shadow between the brothers.

When he smiles now, Jane wonders if Loki can truly read minds. “Did he ever tell you, Dr. Foster, that he has promised to kill me?”

“I can’t imagine you didn’t provoke him somehow.”

A sharp laugh leaves him looking almost surprised at himself – or perhaps at the fact he seems to be finding her more amusing a conversational partner than he’d first imagined. “But then, it does not matter,” he says, as if musing. “The Allfather will never allow him to keep you, inasmuch as one eternal might ever to keep hold of a mayfly in a belljar.”

“I think Thor can make his own choices. And so can I.” Fingers dig deep into her arms, her smile brittle. “After all, you did. Didn’t you?”

Loki merely blinks at her, eyes a bright green even in the reflective red-orange-ochre of his conjured fire. “You should get some sleep, Dr. Foster. I have no desire to be further reprimanded by the Odinson on account of your continued ill health.”

Any additional attempt to speak bunches up in her throat, remains there as he looks away. Loki is now as closed to her as the doorway between life and death itself, and she does not think he would speak again if she tried. If she even wanted to. But as she searches out a comfortable place before the fire, his low beguiling voice moves across the flame between them.

“You must be careful,” he says, and the firelight etches the lines in his face like brands upon ivory. “Do not forget, I was his brother. I have seen how it is for those on the wrong side of his protective instinct.” The smile turns wry, eyes very dark. “And now, too, I have known it from that other side for my own damned self.”

The hot bite of salt at the back of her eyes brings a sudden flush of anger, shame, _pity_ – but then, too, there are other things she must think of first. Like the endless white lines of candles with bright flames shivering in the wind, set upon makeshift altars raised from the dust and debris of a city that has already seen more than its fair share of such vigils. Then, too, she knows well the march of medicine bottles in an array of browns and golds, lined upon a windowsill. Even they are not quite enough to still the whisper-thin tremor of Erik’s hands. It’s always there now. Even when he smiles after another calculation has been taken to logical conclusion.

Jane says nothing more. Instead she looks again to the fire, curled tight about herself with the scent and warmth of Thor pulled tight over her body. She does not think she will be able to sleep, not with Thor under the geis of his brother’s spellwork. But when she opens her eyes at the gentle weight on her shoulder, the fire has changed shape. While it has not yet fallen to embers, it is not quite the blaze Loki had conjured. It still shines bright in his brother’s eyes when Jane looks up to him.

“You are well?”

“Yes.” As Thor’s hand passes over her forehead she cannot help but curve up into the broad palm, letting out a loose sigh as she casts her eyes sideways. “Is Loki asleep?”

“I believe so.”

Though some sensible part of her complains bitterly about the movement, Jane pushes off the last vestiges of sleep and rocks upward. Thor’s frowning, opening his mouth to most likely tell her to lie down again, when she says it bald and simple.

“He had you under a spell, you know.”

His eyes snap immediately across the fire. “What?”

“To keep you asleep.” One hand rests upon a gauntleted forearm, though she knows it is not force that will hold him back. “He said it only worked because he didn’t mean you any harm.”

Now he looks to her alone, eyes the blue-black of a fresh bruise. “Did he mean you harm?”

“I don’t know.” She truly doesn’t, even though Loki had driven words like knives into soft skin she hadn’t even realised she should have armoured. “He stoked the fire up, too.” Her fingers move over the thick fabric about her shoulders, and then she is pulling it loose. “You should take this back, I’m warm enough.”

Yet Thor looks past her once more, making no motion to accept the cloak she had extended. Something very odd moves in his eyes as he stares deep into the flames as if they might grant the power of divination gifted instead to his royal mother. “Why did he not do this earlier?”

Given the contemplative tone, Jane is not entirely sure that he even speaks to her. “He did say he could only do it when it wouldn’t hurt anyone,” she says all the same, quiet in her respect. “I think maybe he was too angry, before.”

The shame on his face then makes him look very young, for an alien prince dressed like a Viking berserker who’s got more than a couple of hundred years on her. “I am sorry, Jane.”

“It’s not me you should be apologising to,” she replies, surprised to realise she means it even before she glances over to where Loki rests with his back to them both. Even in the gloom she can see again he is too thin, dressed though he might be in his hard shell of leather and metal.

Thor shakes his head, words scarce more than a sigh. “Rest, Lady Jane. I will look to you both.”

With Thor to watch over her, Jane will willingly give herself back over to the arms of sleep. Still, her fingers twitch about the thick wool of the second cloak. “Honestly, though. Take it.” He’s frowning deeper, even as she pushes it towards unyielding fingers. “With the fire, I am fine.”

“Jane, you should—”

“ _No_.”

Even a single word can summon up a war entire, and for a moment she can see Thor marshalling forces in the line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders. Then his expression turns rueful. “My mother has mastered that exact same look,” he says, and Jane doesn’t bother to suppress a chuckle.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It is very much meant as one.”

Laughter rumbles from low in his throat as she curls before the fire in her own heavy cloak; his lips pass briefly over her forehead, fingers lingering a moment at one temple before he rises, moves closer to the mouth of the cave. Loki remains but a vague shape in the darkness, wordless and alone.

When Jane wakes it is to see that the fire has all but gone out, though the cold has not seeped into her aching bones. Rather, warmth surrounds her like an embrace – and when she tries to rise, she finds it is precisely that. Arms loosen just enough so that she might turn in them, finding a smiling face so close to hers his breath whispers over her skin.

“Good morning.”

Her own reflexive smile gives a brief stutter, and she glances backward. Yet it seems Loki has not risen, even as she tells herself it is not his business whom Thor might choose to embrace in the night. Still, her cheeks flame hot. And then she sees it.

Loki sleeps, still. But Thor’s cloak is tucked tight about his slim form, dark hair strangely wavy where it has half-fallen over his still features.

“Come,” Thor says, soft into her skin. “It is time to rise.”

They are well into the preparations of their frugal breakfast when Loki stirs. His annoyance with being left to linger in such a state radiates from him; Jane has noticed that whenever she has woken before, both Thor and Loki would be up already. Indeed, Thor has little more than cat-napped before now, and seeing how much clearer his eyes are this morning Jane feels a little twist in her gut.

Then she hears the sudden curse, and looks up to see Loki shedding the cloak as if it were on fire. Thor has climbed to his feet, and again they say nothing. All is in their locked gazes, the twist of their mouths. And neither moves at all.

It is Jane who huffs a breath, rises to her own feet. Even with the constant ache in joint and muscle she bends to the floor to retrieve it, folding the cloak in uneven creases over her arm. Loki’s eyes move first from Thor’s, his snort sharp in the silence.

“It is good to see you do, after all, know the place of a wife and a woman.”

“And you would be an excellent judge of such, yes?”

Cold as Thor’s words are, Loki’s hold a merry malice. “Well, at least I have never played the bride myself, but only a handmaiden.”

The air between them has the heaviness of building static, the bitter taste of burning ozone. With a sigh, Jane swings the cloak around her shoulders and shivers even into its warmth as she moves to the wide open mouth of the cave. This is just another day begun. She sees no point in imagining yet what ends it might bring.


	2. Lead Me Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is where Loki starts being A Little Shit, and Jane is the one who suffers for it. ...or so he thinks.
> 
> Named for and written while listening to [this damned song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptH60ktLqBM).

The fourth night comes after what feels a nightmarish day of endless step and climb, and the events of the evening before have left matters subdued between them all. Though Thor had barely risen to Loki’s few snide remarks after the brief explosive altercation of the morning, that particular episode had ended only when some inexplicable exchange about goats left both brothers tight-lipped with eyes slanted sideways.

The good news is that Loki has located another cave. It might be more cramped than the last but somehow it manages to be warmer, with the primary chamber curved away from its ragged mouth. She’d waited for another argument about first watch, but Loki had lain down without a word and turned his back upon them both.

The cave offers little enough privacy, but Jane would have liked to have stayed up with Thor, talking in quiet whispers. Fatigue instead drags both body and eyelids downwards, a warm hand on the small of her back as she gives over to dreams. Jane has not quite fallen asleep when she realises Thor has moved from her side, voice a low rumble in the darkness.

“I know what you did last night.”

“I did many things last night.” The low chuckle manages to somehow be more disturbing than any clichéd maniacal laugh. “You will have to be more specific, I am afraid.”

“Thank you.”

From the silence, Loki is as startled as Jane herself at Thor’s earnest gratitude. Then, again, he turns to low mirth. “Do you truly believe I did it for _you_?”

“I am not certain it matters, what I believe.”

“Oh Thor, honestly. That’s the entire point.”

Silence reigns triumphant, again. Then, Loki’s huffed breath ruins it entire. “If you wish to sit beside me, then come. There’s no dignity in it, sitting there the way you are with your twiddling thumbs and hang-dog look.”

“I do not wish to be where I am unwanted.”

A click of an impatient tongue whips the air between them. “Take what you want, Thor. It doesn’t matter. Who will I tell, after I am gone?” Amusement shivers through his words, wind over a glacial plain. “Hel has not patience enough for my silver tongue any longer, and you and I both know the vaunted halls of Valhalla welcome no cowards, no traitors.” His voice coils low now, like fingers about an exposed throat. “No monsters, either.”

“Do not use that word!”

“Why not? You yourself were quick enough to use it yesterday.”

Shame does not make Thor any less angry. “And I am sorry for it.”

“You should not be – for I am not.” The casual words are echoed by what seems the sound of him leaning backward, relaxing his long limbs even in their encasing leather and worked metal. “Embrace it, as I have. You’ll be far happier. Especially when it comes to the end.”

Despite the argument, this is the most civil Loki has been in conversation with Thor when it has not been about their travel’s direction or some minutiae of camp. In that she can understand why he does not let it go when another less stubborn person might have. But then, Jane is perhaps in the company of the two most singularly stubborn individuals she has ever met.

“You asked, once, if I mourned.” Thor pauses, seemingly to dampen dry lips. “When I thought you dead.”

“You answered the question.”

“Not the way you needed to hear.” From the scoffing laugh, Loki is turning away – but Thor will not let it go, will not let _Loki_ go. “My life, without you…Loki, I knew I’d lost something I did not want ever to be without. I felt as if half my soul had been torn from my very self.” Again he pauses, and her heart aches for the cracks and ruptures that she knows criss-cross his in endless catastrophe. “I knew I would go on without you. But it was…such a _waste_.”

Jane cannot tell if the sound of movement means Loki has come closer, or withdrawn even further. “What is it that you missed most?” he asks, and for all the bright curiosity of his words their falseness rings true in the bitter note beneath. “Was it having a constant shadow? Someone to always better, to have always as the lesser prince, the lesser warrior, the lesser son?”

“I missed _you_.” Thor struggles for words, his frustration as clear as his misery. “There is no-one else in all the realms like you, Loki.”

“For which I am sure the Allfather gives his thanks every eve before he lays down in that grandiose sarcophagus he calls his royal bed.”

Sudden anger lights up the room, and Mjölnir seems to hum a low song of warning. “Why did you not just come home when I asked? Because the way things are now, even though you are in Asgard, you might as well be beyond the Nine Realms altogether!”

The words ring about the cavern, but Loki seems unmoved. Jane can imagine him staring, bland and bored as a carver’s unfinished masterpiece. Then from the whisper of fabric and loose stone, she hears him turn away.

“Loki.” He pauses, but Thor seems to know it will not be for long. “I know the way.”

“The way that leads where?”

“ _Home_.”

“I have no home.” Sudden pain blossoms in his words, a depth of feeling Jane has never heard from the haughty prince who once was. “The last of it is gone from us both, and you know that. Some things may never be undone, no matter what we wish otherwise.”

Thor’s stunned silence hangs heavy – then there is a swiftly drawn breath, something disastrously close to a sob. Muffled thumps and low curses follow, her curiosity impossible to deny – for if she looks, she can see how Loki holds Thor’s head to his breast with pale fingers wound in his hair, like gold running liquid through the gaps of bleached bone.

“ _Why_?”

“Strangely enough, that is a question not even I can answer.” Pressing backwards, Loki makes his brother look up to him, his expression in the dying firelight a wry smile beneath still eyes. “Some things will just remain forever unknown.”

Dulled, Thor’s words hold the weight of leaded rain. “We are close.”

“Yes. Tomorrow, we will have reached the end of this little journey.”

Such nonchalance strikes Thor with practised precision. “And then?”

“I do believe you made me a promise.”

There is as much resignation as sorrow in the reply, Thor rising to his brother’s level. “Will you make me keep it, then?”

The hands upon his face move with a sculptor’s knowing and grace, Loki drawing so very close. “Your honour would dictate it be so.”

“And if I surrender that honour?”

Pity colours his words with bright shadow. “Do not throw it away for an illusion, brother mine. For that is all you will ever have of me.”

“Is that truly all I ever had of you?”

Loki’s eyes have turned searching, his voice a half-sung lament. “You had all of me, once. If only you but knew it.”

A moment later Jane’s hand is over her mouth, and then _in_ it. A salty taste makes her gag, but she cannot move. In contrast the brothers have given over to a surge of motion and emotion alike, their desperate kiss made entirely of restrained violence trembling upon the verge of fissure and fall. Then Thor pulls back, but Loki does not let him go – and neither does Thor. Two pairs of hands press hard on the sides of faces, breaths come quick and hard, and foreheads press together like twins cradling one another in a shared womb.

“I cannot,” Thor breathes, breaking and broken, and when Loki shakes his head Thor’s moves with it.

“You can.” The tremble of his smile could be pleasure, could be pain. “She will not wake.”

“I thought Father’s wards limited your seiðr so it would not hurt others.”

“This would hurt her.” He might be chuckling, he might be choking around the tightness of his throat “She will not wake.”

She should. She should rise, and she should scream at them both. But she cannot. Yet it is not horror that holds her motionless. Rather, a cold-blooded logic settles like ice in her veins, freezing muscles to taut stillness.

_This is how it ends. This is the last time. Surely he cannot do this with him again, whatever_ this _is, not ever again. He just needs…he needs…to say goodbye._

Thor’s conviction is far less than hers; his pause is a terrible thing, a thickening of the very air itself, as if a great charge is building. Loki’s voice pulses low, conductive, dissipating. “Consider this, then: why should I wish to share this with any other, when it has always been mine alone? The only part of you I never had to share?”

There comes a sigh, like letting go. Jane’s own breath is held in her chest, a tight ball of a scream that she knows she will not let go.

Thankfully, despite Loki’s false promise, they are quiet. Furtive, perhaps, but not quick. Beneath the cloak there is little for her to see but the movement of their bodies. Jane cannot be sure even what it is that they do. In truth she does not _want_ to know. They are brothers, though it seems to her that the word must have a different inherent meaning in Asgard.

This moment is but a bitter reminder of how little she knows of either of them – of what had passed between them as children, as youths, as adults. Something has given them over to one another in this way, whether by their own free will or by the direction of fates far beyond the ken of any mortal. The simple truth could not be ignored: she’d had Thor maybe a week. Loki had held his heart well over a millennium. 

Holding onto herself in the darkness, Jane holds tighter to her silence. She has never felt so small, for perhaps in truth she is the interloper here. Thor had returned for her, certainly, but the battle of New York only proved that he first had come for Loki. The words of the trickster seemed carved into her flesh: _You are no monarch, Jane Foster_.

Thor had made her a promise. They had known each other only but days, and he had kept that promise. Much as she might cling to that, the fact remains that she had been the one to initiate the physicality of any romance between them.

_Did he only find you so interesting because he thought he had lost everything?_

She does not doubt him. In his heart, Thor is no liar. Jane has seen for herself that he makes promises, and then he chooses to keep them. Knowing that, Jane also must factor one simple variable she has no control over, cannot ever know for certain: what other promises Thor has made Loki.

_(“Did he ever tell you, Dr. Foster, that he has promised to kill me?”)_

Matters continue to escalate between the two and with a wince Jane burrows further down in her cocoon of cloaks, trying to keep the rustling to a minimum. With that said, she does not think Thor and Loki are paying her the slightest heed. She has heard tale of their battle upon Stark Tower, and cannot help but think of it now.

It is said that while war raged about them they focused on little but one another, as if Earth was truly but a rickety stage upon which they would play out their godly melodrama. She has only ever spoken to one other so-called Avenger, and when she had briefly broached the subject all Dr. Banner had said was: “Trust me, I know co-dependency when I see it.” He’d then run his hand back through his mess of dark hair, dislodging his glasses so they tumbled to the floor while taking several beakers and flasks with them, and it had been a few good minutes before their Skype conversation had returned to particle theory.

The quickening of breath, gasps, cannot be muffled entire by the press of hands, of lips and teeth finding the flesh of throat and shoulder. A smothered groan twists like a knife low in her gut, tears pricking at her eyes as she clenches them closed. She had imagined that sound, but her own voice had always risen in quick pulse and pleasure to match while her fingers moved low and deep. Now her hands are clenched, and she wishes she was anywhere but here, seeing this side of Thor in a way she had never ever thought to imagine it could be.

It is worse, with Loki. Thor is muttering, mumbling, the air tasting of rain and thunder; she cannot tell if it is that the Alltongue has failed again, or that she simply cannot make the words out. But Loki can. His own rapid rising breaths are only that. The wordsmith has been abandoned by language and its lies, is instead subsumed utterly by the rustle of bodies and hands beneath concealing shadow and cloth. And then, suddenly like fire from heaven:

“Please, Thor. _Please_.”

No part of her, logical or emotional, can imagine how such desperation could not be meant true. The hitch of such words lingers upon the precipice of tears, the subsequent plunge unintended, a low groan signifying the end of his fall. In the nothing that follows Jane must wonder if this is how it has always been for Thor: never knowing which lie might actually be the truth shrouded in fear and fury.

“I never doubted,” he whispers, voice both hollow and hoarse. “Not even when you gave me a dagger instead of your word.”

Jane can all but _hear_ the roll of his eyes, liquid and despairing. “Love destroys as much as it creates.”

“And how I do love you.”

Loki is nothing if not unpredictable, but even given the circumstances Jane cannot quite expect the simplicity of his confession. “As I you,” he says in a voice made of whispers and moans, “ _brother_.”

She is crying, tears trundling in silent trail down her face. From the thickness of Thor’s voice, she cannot doubt that his own cheeks are sheened too with saltwater.

“Loki.” He stumbles, as short a journey as the words must take between them. “Come home.”

“Oh, do vary the tune at least a little, Thor.” The well-aged weariness of it almost makes her pity him. “It is your home, and not mine. My home is wherever it pleases me to stay at any given moment.”

“Then let me help you find a place more permanent.”

“Let it go, Thor. My home will never be the same as yours, not ever again.” It seems Loki can never seem to resist the double-struck blow: “And your home would be empty indeed without its golden prince.”

“Without you there will forever be a place left empty, and cold.”

“Fool.” It sounds more like mourning than insult, even when he goes on. “Then again, nights are a time for dreaming. You will change your mind in the morning, when you see me again by the light of day.” There is a scuffle, and a shove. “And you made me a promise. I intend to see it kept. _Go_.”

But Thor does not move. For all the passion between them but moments ago, things end with little more than a sigh, and then silence. Jane raises her hand, rubs at her itching eyes. She wants to hate him. There is no doubt in her mind that as with the night before, this has all been done on purpose. Loki is a puppeteer, a showman, the ringleader of a circus turned entirely to chaos. She saw this because he wanted her to know with terrible intimacy that he could still use Thor’s dwindling hope to tighten the noose on them both.

But she can still wonder if Loki has gone too far down the rabbithole he himself had unearthed. Her hands tighten, and something in her chest loosens and lets go.

_You had your chance, Loki. You can hardly complain if I now take mine._

Whether they sleep now or linger yet Jane’s eyes remain open, fixed upon the ceiling while dreaming of what lies beyond. Alien skies have opened before her eyes and hands and mind, bringing with them the promise of a fresh science they name sorcery. In this she might find more knowledge than she could ever conceivably _know_ of, let alone learn and understand. She might have all these things, with Thor the doorway thrust open to her.

_And if it closes to you in the process, Loki, I think it serves you damn right._

The fire is the first thing she sees, when morning rears its aching head. The two brothers have already risen, the rituals of waking already seeming long-set for all they have been at this only a matter of days. When Jane presses the heel of one hand to forehead Loki’s words are the first spoken of the morning. Thor stiffens even before they leave his tongue with easy silvered grace.

“I trust you slept well, last night?”

She should scream. She should shout. Instead Jane shrugs, pushing up from the hard ground with a fluidity quite at odds with the agony of flesh and bone. “Quite well, actually. Do I have you to thank for that?”

Sharks have smiles with less teeth. “No thanks are necessary, I assure you. The pleasure was all mine.”

The cloak about her small form holds a scent of sunshine and lightning, and her returned grin is just as luminous. Before she can reply she feels the true presence of Thor come to her side. Only because she knows to look for it can she sense his shame, held as it is beneath a veneer of cool civility. “Loki, that is _enough_.” And then he turns to her, a hand gentle upon her shoulder. “Jane, I am so very sorry. I should not have allowed him to do that to you.”

Loki’s smirk says otherwise, but much as Thor tries to mask his true meaning Jane can see how wretched he feels. His brother is as always the better liar. But Jane has her own talents. One hand moves forward and though he cannot possibly feel it beneath his vambrace, she squeezes all the same. “What’s done is done. And we’ve got other things to do right now.” His brow creases and she can see he wonders. Jane simply rises up on her toes despite the constant ache of her limbs and joints, presses a kiss to the stubble of his cheek. “Come on. Keep moving forward, yeah?”

Again, after a brief bland breakfast dismantling their camp takes hardly any time at all. Thor offers an arm for her to lean upon to help her across the rubble of uneven rock that makes up the cave’s entrance. With one hand holding the cloak closed at her throat she instead waves him forward. She waits until he is out into the daylight, and then casts backward over one shoulder.

“Oh, and Loki?”

Shrouded in shadow, he waits always just behind. “Yes, Dr. Foster?”

“I know Asgard will always need him, but when he needs someplace else? Thor will always find a home on Midgard.” The cloak rests easy upon her shoulders as she smiles, turns away. “I can promise you that.”

Then she steps into the brightness beyond the cave, and doesn’t even blink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...you know, I was just going to leave it here, but now I'm curious about exactly what would go down between Jane and Thor after this latest stunt on Loki's part. Not to mention I posted something else on tumblr the other day that kind of acts as prologue to all this, and...fuck that trailer, I'm telling you. [head in hands]


	3. Warm Shadow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, when I started absently scribbling down the first of these ficlets, I had no intention of writing more than one. Then the second happened. And then I decided that seeing as the first focused on a conversation between Loki and Jane, and the second between Thor and Loki, it was time to give Thor and Jane the same and go for the trifecta.
> 
> Again, named for [a song from _The Walking Dead_ OST](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJWemAUrdnc) because I just can't stop listening to it.

He had claimed that this would be the last day of their journey, but Jane feels as if it might never end. Any sense of purpose or power she might have taken in refusing Loki victory over his little stunt has evaporated, along with the belief she might ever know again what it is to be warm. Even Thor has slowed, Loki stumbling as always before them. She’d had some idea at the beginning that he has not been any more well physically than he is mentally, but this is the first she has seen it so very clearly.

Perhaps it has all been but one big mistake. Jane is not made for magical quests – she is the one who forges the pathways, writes the maps. Thor and Loki have been doing this from their youngest days, presumably, but neither is at their best right now. It doesn’t help that she’s not at all sure whose life is in whose hands, anymore.

Things only get worse the moment Loki drops to his knees and does not move.

“What are you doing?”

The remoteness of Thor’s tone sounds sinister to Jane’s ear, and she is not even its target. Loki merely hunches over himself, voice half-muffled by posture and the low pressure of the air around them.

“I cannot.”

“What?”

“I _cannot_.” Irritation goes down hard in the face of exhaustion when he rises, swaying like a building in hurricane winds. “I am done. I can go no further.”

“Loki, get up.”

On his knees Loki manages to roll his eyes, hands dug deep into the mail armour that hangs from belt to knee. His hair has become a coronal flare of dark matter about his pale face, eyes a green so pale they seem jaundiced. “No.”

“But we are _so close_.” There’s joy there, somewhere, but Thor’s anger is swiftly coming to render it far less than even secondary. “We have to finish this.”

In immediate answer, Loki falls sideways like a domino; oddly, he makes no sound when he settles, unfocused eyes staring forward and past them both. “I miscalculated. I thought I would make it. I rather suppose I lied.” His eyes meet Thor’s, and Jane feels a strange twist in her gut to realise that they almost appear bewildered. “Peculiar, isn’t it?”

Mjölnir rises seemingly of her own will, a storm held in the palm of Thor’s trembling hand. “Get _up_.”

Loki blinks again, and with that motion the dull perplexity of earlier quite vanishes. One corner of his mouth twitches, head tilting with guarded amusement. “Or what, you’ll smack me into the ground with your hammer?” Half-turning, as if conserving what little heat his body might generate, Loki waves his dismissal. “Go away, Thor. Just keep walking straight down to that plateau, you’ll find it soon enough.”

Jane imagines she can almost hear Thor’s nails grinding over Mjölnir’s ridged handle. “I will drag you if I must,” he warns, though Loki is unconvinced.

“By what, my hair?” Scraping back the loosened mess, he winces at the amount that comes away between his fingers. “My hair has suffered enough, Thor. And do put that damn thing away, I’ve already warned you about that.”

Though that’s truth enough Jane raises an eyebrow when the hammer does drop to Thor’s side, the spark calming. They both notice Thor does not loop it about his belt. “So you wish for me to leave you here?” he says, his composure as false as Loki’s widening smile.

“Don’t be too concerned, Thor. I’m a frost giant, I won’t freeze to death.”

As if to prove his point Loki rolls over in the snow, long limbs flung outward like a sacrificial offering to the gods of ice and sky. But his eyes are closed, and Thor’s voice rolls into warning brontide.

“Is this, then, how it begins?”

Impatience and exasperation war when Loki looks up at him through one half-cracked eye. “How _what_ begins?”

“Your betrayal.” There’s an alien tremor to his voice; incredibly, it almost sounds as though he wishes to laugh. Only the white-knuckled clench of his fists betrays the depths of his anger. “You lead us here, and now you fall behind. Why is that? To watch, perhaps. To wait. To take us unawares.”

Scathing is the best descriptor of Loki’s expression. “Or maybe I just want to die in some peace and quiet.”

“I will not allow it.”

One hand rises, presses hard against the armour over his heart. “Oh yes, I quite forgot! Only _you_ may put down this snake in your feathered nest.” Again he leans backward, presenting the target of his chest. “Well, go on then. Do it. Pound my head to gristle and gore and know that the mighty Thor is indeed the lauded giantslayer of ages and epics past.”

“Do not tempt me.”

He blinks wide eyes, puzzled as a toddler looking down the barrel of a shotgun. “And why not?”

Jane is shaking, and she cannot tell if it is fury or fear. “Stop it.”

Long fingers roll outward, beckon with arachnid motion. “Come come Thor, we haven’t got all day.”

“Shut your mouth.”

Having the flat plane of a mythical hammer pointed directly at his face holds no fear for Loki, judging by the dancing delight in his brightening eyes. “Shut it for me.”

“Am I talking to _myself_ here? I said stop it! Both of you!”

At first the two can only stare, struck quite dumb by the hot flare of her fury. Then, naturally, Loki gives a laugh almost as startled as it is scornful. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.” His head lolls sideways, all too eager to share this contempt with his brother, too. “Look at us: two gods born of giants and kings, bowing to the whim of a mortal who wouldn’t last half a day in this realm without either one of us.”

“It doesn’t much look like you’re going to last the day either, the rate you’re going,” Jane snaps, and turns a withering glare on Thor. “We’re taking a break.”

Loki’s eyes roll skyward. “Norns preserve us all.”

Even as Thor begins to look about for a suitable resting spot, Jane bleakly wonders what it means when even so-called gods have higher authorities to yield before. It doesn’t help matters to discover that no caves lurk nearby; the best Thor can manage is a windbreak of rock and ice. From their perch the whiteness of their intended descent waits silent before them, falling into snow-riddled mist.

Only after attending to Jane does Thor turn back for Loki. The farce of it all is almost painful to watch. Loki denies any aid from his brother, insisting on shuffling and shambling under his own lacklustre power until he sits with his back to the wall. As Jane huddles some feet away, sheltered somewhat from the wind, she watches Thor hunch down before his brother. She cannot quite hear them with the wind, but Thor clearly tries to assess his condition. It ends fairly soon given Loki keeps slapping his hands away. The viciousness of it is so at odds with the touches of the night before – with the vulnerabilities then laid bare, as if they had opened their chests and placed fingers directly upon tremulous heartflesh.

She knows she is staring but nothing in her logical mind can convince her to stop. As if sensing her, Thor glances up and away from his brother. The plasma-blue eyes have filled with tangled filaments of pain and frustration. In that, even before he rises, even before he comes to her, she knows that it is too late.

“Jane,” and he is wretched as he hunches down between brother and mortal, “Jane, there is something I must tell you.”

“I already know.”

The simplicity of her reply brings a complex kaleidoscope of emotion: anger, shame, and frustration. In the end they all combine to flat acknowledgment. “You were not sleeping.”

“No. I wasn’t.”

When he bows his head, it seems as if the weight of all the Nine Realms is pressing it down. “I did not intend for this to happen.”

His hair is faintly wet from fallen snow, when she rests an opened palm upon his golden-haired crown. “You’re under a lot of stress, I know that.” Her hand moves, a slow soothing circle. “I mean…everything that’s happened would be bad enough by itself. But Loki’s screwing with you. I mean, _seriously_ screwing with you. And he’s trying to do the same to me through you.” She scarcely realises she is speaking through gritted teeth until she feels the ache in her jaw. “Well, I’m not letting him. Period.”

Thor reaches upward, gentles her hand down before raising his face, eyebrows drawn together. “I am not quite certain I follow.”

“Put it this way – no, I’m not cool with this. Not really. But I think maybe I can see that this is just the way things are, for you two.” Teeth worry at her lip, but there is hardly time for contemplation now. “But I do have to ask. Is this…is this _normal_ , in Asgard?”

She does not think she imagines the spark of defiance beneath the sorrow. “No.”

And Jane presses a hand back through her hair, headache only all the worse. “Look, let’s be real here. You haven’t made me any promises.”

“That does not give me any right to dishonour you as I have.”

“I didn’t say that it did,” she says with sharp edge, even as she blunts it again by sighing. “What I mean is, yeah, sure, I’ve been kind of pissed at you already. Because you stopped by Earth that one time and didn’t say hello.”

“It had never been my intention to stay any longer than the time it would take to collect Loki.” Both tone and body turn stiff. “I severely underestimated that duration.”

“I know. I realise that. But especially with Erik involved—”

“It was precisely _because_ Erik was involved that I had no wish to bring you into peril!” The rising volume presses harsh against her eardrums; Thor’s eyes widen, and then he calms, turns low and urgent. “Jane, Loki had threatened you in the past. Directly. When the Son of Coul informed me that you were well taken care of, I had no wish to draw Loki’s attention to you.”

A pang goes through her at the name. Given he’d been their main contact at SHIELD after Puente Antiguo, Coulson’s death had come as a nasty shock. Darcy dealt with it by building a little shrine of Captain America action figures standing vigil around one from _Men In Black_. At once stage she’d had her iPod propped up with speakers, thirty new songs downloaded for the occasion. Jane had only got as far as _Secret Agent Man_ before she’d decided that Darcy was barred from ever planning her funeral.

_Here’s hoping the matter doesn’t come up any time soon._

Taking a deep breath, Jane places her hand on his upper arm and sets her thin shoulders. “Thor. I do understand. I really do.” Somehow, despite the cold, he remains warm to the touch; it is hard to resist the urge to move close, to burrow into that heat with its scent of plasma and rain. She stays where she is. “And look at it this way – we’re living different lives, in different places. Even when they intersect, they’re never going to be parallel.”

There’s a fresh hurt in his eyes now. “What are you saying?”

“I have things, at home. Stuff I want to do.” Then she winces. “And yeah, there’s a whole lot here I want to see and do and touch and taste and whatever, but that doesn’t change the fact that my _life_ is at home.”

Her heart tightens when she realises Thor looks to have been poleaxed with his own hammer. “You do not wish to stay?”

The throb of her head gives a sympathetic pulse to match Mjölnir’s flare. “It’s not about staying, or leaving, or anything in between.” And she winces again; much as she’s still apt to complain about how Don had been crap with relationships, Jane knows that in a lot of ways she’s not much better. But at least she tries. “Thor, no matter how you look at it, I’m no-one’s first choice for queen.”

“He’s also not my first choice for king. Fancy that.”

“We don’t need input from the peanut gallery, thanks,” she snaps, though Loki does not even deign to look at her. With a snort, she turns to Thor, begins to scoot down the wall somewhat. “Come over here, a bit.”

Thor follows, brow furrowed in doubt. “His hearing is very acute.”

“Yeah, so’s mine, and he knows it.” She turns to him, arms folded over her chest, and Thor’s hand moves without thought to Mjölnir.

“Jane, what my father has said—”

“It doesn’t _matter_. We have to fix this. The three of us.” Frustration and fatigue both leave her breathless, and she presses the fingers of one hand to the base of her throat, breathes deep, feels the burn of snow and water. “And whatever happens after that? It happens. We all have our own lives, past and future. But right now, let’s just deal with the present.”

“I didn’t know you had a yen for the philosophical types, Thor,” calls Loki in that same disinterested tone, and even as Jane’s hand tightens on his arm Thor whips around.

“I also don’t have much of a taste for horses and goats outside of using them as steeds, but to each his own.”

Even at this distance Loki’s eyes glitter with sudden malice. “Oh, you have that in common with your father, indeed.”

“Stop rising to him,” Jane hisses, and Loki’s chuckle cuts through the air like broken glass.

“Oh, believe me, he rose _very_ well last night.”

“ _Loki_!”

A thunderclap almost brings the sky crashing down around them; the ice beneath their feet seems to pulse, sudden and bright. Jane’s hair whips in the upgust of wind, but it is not biting and cold. It is _hot_ , ionised and silver, bringing with it the taste of metal on her tongue, a low buzz like radio static in her teeth.

“Thor.” She might as well be holding a live wire, but her fingers remain in place. “Let it go.”

“I could, yes,” Thor says, soft, his eyes upon his brother. “But then, Loki is the one who is so very good at that.”

Given how pale he is already, it should be impossible for Loki to turn as white as he does. And yet a moment later he turns his back, half-risen to his feet, stumbling out of view as the charge of the air bleeds away. It is only when he stops that Jane swallows back strange bile, her voice a low whisper in the terrible silence between brothers.

“What have you done?”

Thor does not watch his brother’s retreat. “I think he would tell you the question is what have I _not_ done,” he mutters, and there’s a desolation there that makes her want to both pity Loki and punt him into the nearest local equivalent of Mount Doom. Instead she draws the loosening cloak about her again, steels herself for yet another question.

“Was he telling the truth?” Thor does not look up. “When he said you promised to kill him?”

“Yes.”

The single word shudders through her, cold and uneven. Jane’s hands move to curl about her upper arms, and she cannot help but turn her eyes to Loki. Curled in upon himself, he is but a dark smudge against the white. For one so very tall he can take up a very small space when he wishes it.

“He came by such promise honestly enough.” A low laugh draws her attention back to Thor, one wrought of bitter regret instead of humour. “Jane, the trial…”

As his voice fades into the cool air, she frowns. “He actually got a trial?”

“Presided over by the Elders, yes.” Here he pauses, rubbing one hand over his face so that it dislodges what small flurries have fallen to rest amongst his beard. “You have been with Erik since his…time with my brother, yes?”

“Yes.”

He sighs, this time pinching the bridge of his nose like a child reciting a difficult lesson. “The tesseract…SHIELD saw it as an energy source. That is not precisely what it is. Rather, it amplifies the inherent nature of what it is exposed to. So, certainly, they were not wrong – if you feed it into an energy loop, it will amplify that energy.”

She finds herself nodding along; it is not a theory she hasn’t heard before. “For Erik, it was his thirst for knowledge.”

“Indeed. But, to Loki’s detriment, he did not realise too that Erik’s basic nature is to always be cautious. To have a way out. To prepare for the worst.” Now he looks to his hands again, head bowed and low. “He was right, perhaps, to warn you away from me.”

When she lays one hand over his, instinct has them curving together. “Actually, I think he was wrong on that one.” And she smiles, tremulous with the memory of that street, of his solemn farewell. His kiss had left her knuckles warm long after she, Darcy, and Erik had left him to pursue alone his presumed madness.

But Thor’s eyes have again fixed upon another, one whose madnesses are very real. “Perhaps,” he repeats, generous mouth creasing in a deep grimace. “I…I do not wish to speak to you of things that were said between us, in New York. I should, but I—”

“Thor.” She squeezes his hand tight, again. “It’s okay. You don’t have to.” A tremor still threatens even as she says, “I know that some things are between you two, and you two alone.”

“He betrayed Asgard. He betrayed _me_. Even when given the opportunity of redemption, of penance.” His hands move in wild gesticulation, knocking hers free. Then he slumps, head moving in bewildered back and forth. “The tesseract didn’t force him to do these things against his will, Jane. It just amplified that part of him that always had that tendency, that _potential_ from the very beginning.”

In this place everything is always cold, but Jane does not think that is why she cannot stop shivering. “I’m sorry.”

Pain drives his eyes closed. “Not as sorry as I.”

Thor’s grief is a palpable thing, one he holds to with almost possessive guilt. Much as it feels a violation to intrude further into that bleak place, Jane’s logical mind cannot stop picking at the inferences it draws. “But Loki wasn’t as single-minded as the others.”

“No. The sceptre, to some extent, allowed him greater control over the tesseract’s power. It allowed him to channel it, to control the flow and current. It made him stronger, in seiðr and in purpose.” Such despondency suits him ill, leaves even his brilliant red-gold soul colourless and grey. “But it was still Loki. It was always Loki’s choice.”

Given Loki’s attitude towards her, Jane’s not entirely sure why she tries to give his brother any hope, thin as it is. “He can still make other choices.”

“Yes. He can.” He opens his eyes, face drawn and strange as he turns towards his silent brother. “But will he?”

Loki is gone.

Curses spill from his tongue like electrostatic discharge, eyes alight with fury. Jane understands not a word, and cannot be sure if the Alltongue is sparing her delicate mortal ears or if there’s just no way of translating such creative epithet. It matters not as his arm crushes tight about her waist, air beginning first to wail and then scream with the spin of his hammer.

“I’m never getting used to this,” Jane mutters as they careen forward and up, though if he hears her over the rush of air and snow Thor makes no mention of it.

Without his magic Loki has not gotten far. But then Jane suspects he was only making a point. Stumbling, he glances upward, stops dead; as they draw near she can see his exasperation. Loki has said more than once that it is best not to invoke Mjölnir’s might, to keep their presence quiet, but then the distance is shortening by the second.

They hit the ground with bone-jarring precision. Even though Thor takes the majority of the impact it resonates through her; it bring the sensation pressing her tongue to a battery, or removing her hands from a Van der Graff generator before the current had been switched off. But while his arm remains about her waist, holding her high, Thor’s attention has moved to Loki alone.

“What are you doing?” he growls.

“Forgive me for not wishing to linger while you and your little mortal pet talk about me as if I were not right there.” His grimace is bitter gall, spit in his brother’s face. “I rather feel I’ve had enough of such treatment over the course of my entire damned life.”

Given how he’d collapsed only moments ago, Jane could not have predicted either the way Thor rushes at him, or the way Loki snarls and gives into the fight. Perhaps Thor had only meant to grab him by the shoulders, to shake some sense into his younger brother, for all Jane figures that is about as likely a conclusion as Mahatma Gandhi arriving to teach the two something about passive resistance. Either way they are on one another like two lions, a tangle of limbs and strength and misguided energy.

It cannot last long. In the end Loki is pinned beneath his brother, but from the wildcat laughter, the feral glint in his eyes, Jane has to think this is but only exactly the way he wants it to be.

“Do it,” he gasps, and it seems he always has strength enough to grin. “Do it! Kill me. Keep your promises, oh noble son of the One-Eye Allfather.” Thor’s hands tighten on his gauntleted wrists, face twisted and hips bearing down, and Loki’s delight is a terrible thing. “Oh, no. You can’t. You can’t.” Laughter explodes from him like a loosed rocket, spiralling upward, aiming directly towards hysteria. “You still have use of me!”

Thor pushes backward, regaining his feet. He doesn’t let go, dragging Loki upwards with him, but Loki is as boneless as a marionette with cut strings. No matter what Thor does to force him upright Loki will do nothing but laugh, and when Thor releases him in utter disgust Loki just falls back into the snow.

“I do have use of you yet.” Thor glares down at his brother. “So be useful.”

Loki hiccups, coughs through the last of his laughter. A smirk moves over his face as pushes himself upward, but he says not a word. It is Jane’s turn, her arms very tight over her chest.

“It didn’t have to be this way.”

His head swivels, preternatural in speed and expression. “What was that you were saying about peanut galleries, Dr. Foster?”

She sets her jaw, even as her heart flutters like a sparrow cornered by the kitchen cat. “I didn’t realise you knew what they were.”

It should be a crime, that he can but open his eyes just a little wider and look so very innocent. “Well, I have been to the opera.”

“Enough.” Thor stands between them, Mjölnir’s deadstar weight a silent promise. “Let us end this.”

And Loki just laughs, one last time. “Well, you see, that’s rather the thing about cycles, Thor,” he says, a trickster’s conspiratorial whisper. “For you see: they have no end!”

Then he walks forward, scarcely limping now, paradoxical creature of ice and fire. Thor only stares, but Jane can feel the turn of a storm overhead. With a sigh she reaches for his hand, and holds tight.

“So let’s go start over, yeah?”

Thor does not reply. But it is enough, she thinks, that he takes that first step in time with hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I really have no idea where the movie's going and I was only writing this to examine the complexities of the dynamic between these three, I'm unlikely to go much further as that would involve constructing an actual plot. But hey, if you're interested, I slapped up a little ficlet on tumblr the other day [here](http://claricechiarasorcha.tumblr.com/post/48886939630/fic-running), called _[Running](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvDBFB8RD_Q)_. It would come before these ficlets, and is Thor and Loki's relationship as seen from Fandral's viewpoint, as told to Jane. With some Frigga thrown in. Because by golly I wish we got to see more of the supporting cast in these movies.


End file.
